Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development. ISSN: 2630-7065 (Print) 2630-7073 (e). Vol. 3 No. 3. 2020 Association for the Promotion of African Studies ENGLISH LANGUAGE: AN IMPERATIVE TOOL FOR ETHNO- LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL UNITY IN NIGERIA Ogunnaike Jimi, Ph.D. Department of English Studies Tai Solarin University of Education Ijagun, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria
[email protected] DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12616.55046 & Adenuga, F. T. Ph.D Department of English Studies Tai Solarin University of Education Ijagun, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria
[email protected] DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12616.55046 Abstract With her more than one hundred and fifty million people, Nigeria is not only densely populated but equally ethnolinguistically and multiculturally diverse in nature. Before the arrival of the British colonialists, Nigeria used to be an homogeneous entity with various indigenous or local languages. The unification of these various entities in 1914 by the British government brought Nigeria together as an homogeneous entity with the name called "Nigeria" having two broad divisions, tagged the Northern and Southern protectorates. The two protectorates were also dominated by three major indigenous languages -Hausa in the North while Igbo and Yoruba were in the Eastern and Western parts of the Southern protectorate respectively. These three major indigenous languages notwithstanding, there are at the moment, more than two hundred and fifty local or indigenous languages spoken all over the nation with their different cultures. Nigeria is being united through the adoption and use of the English language which the European colonialists imposed on her and her people.